General

California: Rene Laennec, born this day in 1781, was a French physician who invented the stethoscope- one of the most indispensable medical instruments that fundamentally changed the way lung and heart problems are detected and diagnosed.
The idea behind the stethoscope came from Laennec's memory in 1816 when he observed children playing with a long stick-one scraped it with a pin while the other listened giddily to the amplified sound on the other end.
From this Laennec rolled up a piece of paper and pressed it to his patient's chest and was able to listen to the beating of the heart all loud and clear. The early prototype of a stethoscope consisted of a hollow tube of wood that was 3.5 cm (1.4 inches) in diameter and 25 cm (10 inches) long and was monoaural, transmitting sound to one ear.
The instrument replaced the practice of immediate auscultation in which a physician laid his ear on the chest of the patient to listen to the sounds. In 1826, Laennec died from cavitating tuberculosis—the same disease that he helped elucidate using his stethoscope. He used his own invention to diagnose himself and understand that he was dying.
Celebrating the 235th birthday of the pioneer, doodlers Helene Leroux an Olivia Huynh created today's doodle showing both the original stethoscope from way back in the 1800s to the modern version that use rubber tubing and are binaural.

Have you ever felt like someone is watching you on the street? Like you can feel their eyes burning into the back of your head?
There’s a new social network in town called Follower that’s offering just that. It works by assigning you a stranger who will follow you around for a day and surreptitiously observe your every move from afar. You’ll never see or hear who this person is, but you’ll know they are there through a series of updates on the accompanying iOS app.
The tagline for the service is ‘don’t go unnoticed’ and the idea is that by having an unseen companion, you might be more inclined to add a little adventure or fun to your day, or just be satisfied with the fact that someone is appreciating what you do so you’re not entirely alone.
To get followed, you need to apply online and explain why you want to be chosen. If you get accepted, you’ll need to download the Follower iPhone app and upload a headshot for your new companion to see. You’ll then get connected with your Follower who uses the GPS on your phone to track you down. When the time is up, you’ll receive a photo of yourself from the Follower and a note to say they’ve left.
At no point throughout the day will your Follower ever come into contact with you so you will never really know who it is.
The project is the brainchild of artist and faculty member at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, Lauren McCarthy, who is also the only Follower at the moment.While it sounds like a social experiment, McCarthy explains that it is part of an ongoing performance art project so it will be interesting to see who wins the performance – the Follower or the followed.

California : Tech giant Apple has now over 11 million music subscribers. The company’s senior vice presidents, Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue, confirmed the figures on John Gruber’s, The Talk Show podcast.
Federighi and Cue also revealed that there are 750 million transactions per week on the App Store and iTunes Store and iCloud has 782 million users.
Apple Music is a music streaming service developed by Apple Inc. The service includes the blog platform Connect, which allows the artists to share their posts, photos, videos and tracks with fans, and Radio which incorporates some aspects of iTunes Radio. Apple Music provides music recommendations based on the user's taste and is integrated with Siri voice commands.

New Delhi: India's second-largest telecom operator Vodafone India Thursday launched fourth-generation or 4G services in Bengaluru, a day after it made debut in Mumbai.
The roll-out will be completed across all parts of Bengaluru in a phased manner by March 2016, the telco said in a statement. Subscribers in city's business and residential corridors such as Jayanagar, Basavangudi, JP Nagar, Electronic City, Bangalore International Airport, Whitefield, BTM Layout, Chamrajpet and Koramangala can now have access to Vodafone 4G network.
The UK-based telco has recently launched 4G services on spectrum in 1800 MHz band in Kerala, Karnataka, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi and NCR. Vodafone's 4G service in Bengaluru is built on a strong fibre backhaul, and is supported by 3.5G services. With this launch, Vodafone is now able to offer 2G, 3G and 4G services in the city.
"With Bengaluru launch, we complete the first phase of roll-out of our 4G services across Kerala, Karnataka, Kolkata, Delhi & NCR and Mumbai," Sunil Sood, Managing Director & CEO, Vodafone India said.
4G, according to Sood has a potential to revolutionize the mobile experience through powerful innovation that impacts how we work and live.
"Initial response from customers who have experienced our 4G services in these markets has been positive and encouraging," Vodafone top executive added. Vodafone 4G services are now available in five circles which contribute to 30% of industry revenues and close to 50% of the company's India data revenues.
Bengaluru customers will get 4G services at 3G prices, they will also get double data besides a three month complimentary subscription to TV, movies and music on Vodafone Play. The company has also tied up with video-on-demand service HOOQ, movie content provider Hungama Play, and an array of data packs ranging from a trial pack at Rs 8 to a 20GB pack.
The telco has invested over Rs 725 crore in the past 18 months to expand, modernize and build a more technology and energy-efficient network in the state. Vodafone 4G services can be accessed from 4G-enabled handsets offered by various smartphone manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, Micromax, Microsoft, Lava, Xolo among others.

California : The Facebook Messenger app, which we use every day for chatting and voice calls, has a hidden chess game. The game can be played by any user in a personal chat window. It works on the Messenger app for Android and iOS, the Messenger Web client (www.messenger.com), and via messages on the Facebook Web interface.
To play chess on the Facebook Messenger, all you need to do is enter "@fbchess play" command to begin playing a game with the person you're chatting with.
To move your pieces, you will need to be familiar with the Standard Algebraic Notation commands used to refer both the pieces and locations on the board. Entering a command such as "@fbchess Pd3" would move a pawn to d3 location. For reference, K is for King, Q for Queen, B for Bishop, N for Knight, R for Rook and P is for Pawn.
If you get stuck, you can always enter "@fbchess help" in the conversation's text field. A list of commands and instructions will then show up. The game tries its best to help users from losing and prevents them from making any move that does not protect the King, when in 'Check' situation. If you feel like giving up, you can always type "@fbchess resign".
The hidden chess game was first discovered a month ago by Reddit users. It is worth mentioning that Facebook Messenger got its first game - Draw Something - last year.
Facebook last month announced that the number of people using its Messenger application monthly has shot past 800 million, with more features on the way to win even more fans.
Improvements to the smartphone messaging application last year included ramping up speed, making it easier to send photos, adding video calling, letting businesses use it for customer service and adding the ability to send money to friends.

California: Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp has announced that the group chat limit has been increased from 100 to 256 people.
The group chat limit was 100 earlier, which was raised from 50 in November 2014. The development comes days after the popular mobile messaging app announced that it now had more than a billion monthly active users.
"One billion people now use WhatsApp. There are only a few services that connect more than a billion people. This milestone is an important step towards connecting the entire world," Zuckerberg had posted on Facebook.
Based in Mountain View, California, WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary cross-platform instant messaging client for smartphones that operates under a subscription business model.
It uses the Internet to send text messages, images, video, user location and audio media messages to other users using standard cellular mobile numbers. Around 1.6 billion photos and 250 million videos are being shared daily in 53 languages at WhatsApp.

California: The doodle on the Google homepages in India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Iceland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, and Lithunia is inspired by Amrita Sher-Gil's painting 'Three Girls.’
January 30, 2016 is the legendary Indian painter's 103rd birth anniversary. Amrita Sher-Gil was born on January 30, 1913 to a Punjabi Sikh father and a Hungarian Jewish mother in Budapest, Hungary. She died at a young age of 28 (on December 5, 1941) in Lahore.
Sher-Gil is considered among the most important Indian painters of the 20th century with 174 documented works created over the course of her brief career. Like her Mexican peer Frida Kahlo, with whom she shares Hungarian heritage, Sher-Gil was a rebellious and adventurous spirit who broke barriers in art and life.
She spent the first years of her life in Budapest getting painting lessons. Amrita could very well have spent all her life, short as it was, as a wealthy socialite interested in the arts. However, two things changed all that-her entry into the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, when she was only seventeen and her relocation to the place of her father's birth, India.
This inordinately talented painter earned accolades very early on for her talent in Paris. Vivid colour, graceful forms, and bold strokes mark the truly remarkable life and work of Indian painter, Amrita Sher-Gil. Today's Doodle honours the 'Indian Frida Kahlo,' who left no holds barred in her work, or in her life. Her paintings speak volumes of her passionate lifestyle and relentless desire to express herself through her canvasses. Sher-Gil studied and practised in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where she got her start as an artist and life consummate bohemian. Over time, her work became a clear salute to the feminine form, and Sher-Gil into an uncompromising talent," says Google in its description of the doodle in honour of Amrita Sher-Gil.

Patna : The app, containing motivational videos developed to help married rural women in India better understand contraceptive choices, led to a dramatic increase in the number of women using modern family planning methods in just a few months, the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) research suggests.
The researchers say that women who watched videos were 4.5 times more likely to use modern contraceptive methods than those who did not.
The findings show that mobile technology provides an innovative and dynamic platform for social and behavior change communication, says team lead Sanjanthi Velu, adding that it can encourage conversations between women and frontline health workers that are interactive, culturally relevant, and personalized - and that lead to increased, sustained use of modern contraceptive methods.
As part of a larger communications initiative, CCP developed the app, called Gyan Jyoti, or "light of knowledge," for use in the state of Bihar in India under Project Ujjwal, a UK aid-funded family planning project led by Palladium. The app is designed for use by ASHAs, community health workers in India, who visit the homes of rural women to promote family planning and other healthy behaviors.
The app incorporates a variety of videos about family planning and modern contraceptive methods, including entertaining and educational films, testimonials from happy couples who are using contraception, Q & A videos with physicians and other information that aims to dispel myths and misconceptions.
The study is presented at the International Family Planning Conference in Nusa Dua, Indonesia.

Udupi: Malpe beach, one of the main tourist attractions in southern Karnataka, has become the first beach in India to have wi-fi connectivity.
This Wi-Fi facility will be available for 30 minutes per phone, with speeds matching 4G, per person per day. The Department of Tourism will pay the BSNL an amount of Rs. 1 lakh quarterly for the Wi-Fi service.
This facility was launched on the Malpe beach at a function, organised by the District Administration, Department of Tourism and the Malpe Beach Development Committee, here. Launching this facility, Pramod Madhwaraj, MLA, said that the Malpe beach attracted a lot of tourists from across the country.
The provision of the free Wi-fi facility would be one more attraction for the tourists to visit the beach. “I will speak to the ministers concerned and urge them to provide round-the-clock Wi-Fi facility for tourists on the beach,” he said.
Mr. Madhwaraj said that the District Administration and the Malpe Beach Development Committee had made all arrangements for the safety of the tourists. An amount of Rs. 80 lakh had been spent for provision of various facilities for the tourists including maintaining cleanliness.
The facilities provided at the beach included construction of a watch tower, appointment of personnel to maintain cleanliness, lifeguard facility, toilet and parking facilities.
An equipment to clean the beach would be purchased at a cost of Rs. 70 lakh. An amount of about Rs. 5 crore would be spent on construction and development of roads to improve connectivity to the beach, Mr. Madhwaraj said.

California: Google doodle by doodler Olivia Huynh will remind you about the tongue-gurning, tear inducing qualities of peppers long before Columbus reached the Americas.
The doodle is in honor of Wilbur, Lincoln Scoville’s 151st birthday who invented the way to measure pepper’s heat. In his book, The Art of Compounding, he has mentioned milk as an antidote for pepper heat. He is also remembered for the organoleptic test that uses human testers to measure pungency in peppers.
“Spiciness is somewhat of a universal, comical experience, which I think opened the door for us to do something we usually might not be able to, like a fighting game. I started making storyboards for how the game could unfold while engineers worked on building prototypes. Then I started sketching and making draft art to put in the prototype, so we could see what the experience would be like in interactive form,” Huynh said.
It is an interactive doodle that lets you have some fun. Once you click on the fiery play button, the interactive game will help you learn heat properties of bell pepper, jalapeno pepper and cayenne pepper. You need to throw ice-cream on the peppers to neutralise them. As the game proceeds, it gets difficult to use the slider and aim the ice-cream at the pepper.
You will also see Wilbur Lincoln Scoville with several types of peppers in the background.